Greetings! I’m Mike Cannon, the artist formerly known as Twinblaze. In this column, I’ll be looking at decks for Standard and other formats that can be built at relatively low cost. In addition to cards that are inexpensive to buy from online dealers and other sources, I’ll be making use of cards that can often be traded for easily, such as prerelease promos and nonrare cards. Whether you’re a college student who’s short on cash, or you’re just not sure if you want to devote hundreds of dollars to playing competitively, I’ll be endeavoring to give you some great options that can take down a local tournament without putting a strain on your budget.

Standard is still pretty wide-open right now, but we’re starting to get some sense of which decks have what it takes to compete. B/R Vampires has been doing well, and control is still going strong in both U/W and U/B. M12 has given Red Deck Wins a lot of love, so that needs to be taken into consideration as well. Exarch Twin and Valakut were the early favorites, but they haven’t been putting up the kind of results people were expecting. We’ll keep them in mind, but biasing our deck toward those matchups doesn’t seem worth it right now. Looking at the first four decks I mentioned, it seems that the format right now is mostly made up of very fast and very slow decks, with the matchup between the two being largely dependent on how quickly the slow deck can clear the board. The deck I’ll be looking at today attacks the format from a different angle. It’s fast enough to put the pressure on slower decks and put up a strong defense against faster decks, while still being slow enough to have serious game after losing several creatures to a sweeper or an attrition war. I call it Midrange White.

The Creatures

Hero of Bladehold is one of the main reasons to build this type of deck. It has enough toughness to survive a Lightning Bolt, it attacks for an impressive 7 damage, and if it can survive just one turn, it will start pumping out card advantage in the form of Soldier tokens. This is the kind of card that can win games on its own if it goes unanswered, and the ability to come out on turn four just makes it that much better. This is a very powerful card, and this deck can use it to tremendous advantage.

Blade Splicer is a card that has a lot of potential, but hasn’t really gotten a chance to shine yet. Against a control deck, a 3-drop that can attack for 4 is always nice to have around, and having that power split across two bodies means that he’s still getting hit for 1 even if he has a removal spell. Against aggressive decks, a 1/1 will often trade with an attacking creature, and a 3/3 is often too big to trade with, necessitating the use of a removal spell. Forcing your opponent to use two cards to deal with your one is rarely a bad idea.

Porcelain Legionnaire seems rather unexciting on the surface, but has a surprising amount of value. It can be used as either a 2-drop or a 3-drop depending on what else you have in your hand, helping ensure that you use your available mana to its fullest potential. When playing against a control deck, this guy can start dealing some heavy damage early in the game, putting your opponent on his heels very quickly. Against aggro decks, a 3-power creature with First Strike is nearly impossible to beat in combat, and this guy will quickly eat a removal spell, making room for your larger creatures to come in uncontested.

Sun Titan makes up the top end of the curve. A 6/6 with Vigilance is always strong, and the ability to resurrect fallen Blade Splicers and Porcelain Legionnaires puts this guy over the top. Sun Titan here plays a very similar role to Grave Titan in U/B control decks. If it’s allowed to keep attacking, it will keep putting threats onto the battlefield, and even if it immediately eats a removal spell or trades with an opposing Titan, you’ll still have creatures left behind.

Wall of Omens may seem strange in a deck where all the other creatures play so aggressively, but it provides a tremendous amount of value against other creature decks. Having a wall on defense lets you be more aggressive with your other creatures, and the fact that it draws a card means it costs next to nothing for you, and can even help smooth out shaky hands.

Shrine of Loyal Legions isn’t technically a creature, but it certainly does a good job of making them. This card fulfills much the same function here as Shrine of Burning Rage does in RDW. Cracking it at the end of your opponent’s turn for ten tokens is usually going to mean the end of the game. Even without a huge number of charge counters on it, it can help you come back strong after a sweeper, or put any aggressive deck in a very tough position. The downside is that you need to play these early on to get full value. Top-decking a Shrine late in the game won’t do anything to swing a close match in your favor. You need to draw it before you need it. The advantage is that if you draw it early on, it will often put your opponent in a situation where he simply can’t win. Having a Shrine full of counters and several creatures on the board may seem unnecessary, but when your opponent wipes the board with a sweeper and you’re out of cards, you’re going to need a very strong backup plan.

The Spells

Oblivion Ring is a great new addition from M12, and can deal with just about anything, from planeswalkers to Titans. It’s a little slow against aggressive decks, but the flexibility of this card more than makes up for it.

Condemn picks up the slack against aggro, taking out any creature for only a single mana. The life gain may seem counterintuitive, but it rarely matters once you have control of the game.

Tezzeret's Gambit may seem like a bad fit for this deck, since you’re not playing Blue, and the only thing Proliferate does is make this effectively a White spell for the purposes of Shrine of Loyal Legions. However, I’ve found that this deck is more than willing to pay 2 life for a Divination (or an extra mana for a Sign in Blood), and having that little bit of card-draw really helps the deck keep pumping out threats into the late game.

The Lands

Since this deck only uses one color, I included four Tectonic Edges to help deal with Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle and Celestial Colonnades. This deck also wants a land count that’s just a bit higher than normal, since hitting every land drop is extremely important.

The Sideboard

Timely Reinforcements is one of my favorite cards coming out of M12. It’s a huge beating for any aggro deck, and can pull you way ahead for only 3 mana. The combination of Renewed Faith and Even the Odds on a single card is pretty incredible, and will likely have aggressive decks shaking in their boots for months.

Kor Firewalker is an obvious choice against Red decks, which might be able to give you a bit of trouble now that they have some new cards like Grim Lavamancer and Manabarbs. This card has fallen out of use somewhat, since it can be killed relatively easily by Shrine of Burning Rage, but in this deck, that just means your opponents won’t be able to deal with Hero of Bladehold later.

Journey to Nowhere has always been a solid removal spell, but hasn’t seen much play during the past few months. Here, it comes in for Condemn against decks relying on Titans, since you don’t want to give them that attack trigger.

Demystify is a narrow sideboard card if ever there was one, but you need to have something to deal with Exarch Twin. Dismember has been a popular solution, but I feel it may soon fall out of favor in non-Black decks, since it can’t handle Titans, and it can’t deal with the Exarch if there’s a Spellskite in play.

When it’s all put together, the deck looks like this:

[cardlist]

[Creatures]

3 Sun Titan

4 Blade Splicer

4 Hero of Bladehold

4 Wall of Omens

4 Porcelain Legionnaire

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

4 Condemn

4 Tezzeret's Gambit

4 Oblivion Ring

4 Shrine of Loyal Legions

[/Spells]

[Lands]

21 Plains

4 Tectonic Edge

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

3 Kor Firewalker

4 Demystify

4 Timely Reinforcements

4 Journey to Nowhere

[/Sideboard]

[/cardlist]

While it may not be appropriate to take to a PTQ, this deck should be able to win a few FNMs. It’s fairly powerful, and its high resiliency will help it do quite well against a variety of different decks.

If you have any questions or comments, hit me up on the forums, or leave a message in the comments section below.